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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 29, 1991)
Opinion ■ ■ ' • --- ! Jana Pedersen, Editor, 472-1766 Eric Pfanner, Editorial Page Editor Diane Brayton, Managing Editor Walter Gholson, Columnist Paul Domeier, Copy Desk Chief Brian Shellito, Cartoonist Jeremy Fitzpatrick, Senior Reporter Low expectations Negative posturing threatens conference Mideast leaders are preparing to meet for a peace conference Wednesday in Madrid. Meanwhile, Mideast nationals are busy showing off their true colors at home. On Monday, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, a radical and Iran’s former interior minister, called the Madrid confer ence a “crime against the Palestinian people.” He urged his countrymen to respond with suicide attacks against Israel. A short time later, two Jewish settlers were killed and five wounded when unknown assailants opened fire on a bus carrying settlers to a demonstration urging Israel not to trade land for peace. In Turkey, two bombings by a Muslim terrorist group opposed to the conference killed an American and seri ously wounded an Egyptian diplomat. In Madrid, rumors abound that Arab terrorists are planning attacks on the conference site. Spain has re sponded by dele gating more than 12,(XX) security officers for the conference, includ ing sharpshooters posted on the roof of the 18th-century Royal Palace, where the delegates will meet. Meanwhile, Israel Prime Minis ter Yitsak Shamir has refused to halt construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied Robert Borzekofski/DN tCITltOriCS. lSniCl S Labor Party had proposed a freeze on settlement construc tion in lands occupied in the 1967 Middle East War. “We cannot accept preconditions to the opening of negotiations,'' Shamir said in a statement issued by his office. “The moment you announce a freeze or a halt you weaken our position in negotiations.” But Labor Party Chairman Shimon Peres said on Israel radio that his party had proposed a three-step accord in prepartion for the conference: Israel would stop the construction of settlements, the Palestinians would end their clashes with Jews in the territories and Arab states would lift their economic boycott of Israel. “It would definitely not be a bad package,” Peres said. The compromise was proposed in response to demands aired Sunday by leaders of the Palestine Liberation Or ganization. Unless Israel halts construction, the PLO threatened, Arab leaders will stop negotiations after the talks’ opening session. The Labor Party package had appeared to be a reason able, last-minute appeasement to preface the talks. Appar ently, Shamir would rather keep settlement construction as a trump card for the talks. Just as Shamir's goals are obscure, the tensions build ing within each of the Mideast nations threaten to hurl their respective leaders toward Madrid without truly intending to negotiate. Monday’s events send a signal to the rest of the world to expect little of the talks, which open Wednesday. If indications ever existed that Mideast leaders were willing to work out their differences, these latest maneu vers strain further the tenuous arrangement on which the talks are based. —jp -EDITORIAL POLICY Signed stall editorials represent the official policy of the Fail 1991 Daily Nebraskan. Policy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. Its members are: Jana Pedersen, editor; Eric Pfanner, editorial page editor; Diane Brayton, managing editor; Walter Gholson, columnist; Paul Domeier, copy desk chief; Brian Shellho, cartoonist; Jeremy Fitzpa trick, senior reporter. The Daily Nebraskan’s publisher are the regents, who established th UNL Publications Board to supei vise the daily production of the pa per. According to policy set by the re gents, responsibility for the cdiloru content of the newspaper lies sold in the hands of its students. TRfrfrE- PUNCHES MOftTVtoUORAatONClt, IT Y\AS SeEl4 A^ PUEASORg SPARRY & >M\tA W\>.W \T ^ V=OR ME-'TC -TAG OUT KUPVEn" PARTNER S^PVhi. / rtN... iovr t£MtAE' GfcT OP..VU. SWM'EM GARY LONGSINE Column outlet for hidden tidbits As viewers of the movie “Spi nal Tap”already know, spon taneous human combustion happens all the time — it just isn’t widely reported. The white-male dominated press has conspired to keep the truth from us. That’s what happened to Jimmy Hoffa. right in the middle of a team ster’s meeting. Of course, Jimmy wasn’t in the meeting hall at the time; he was in the parking garage of the hotel. Now, years after his disappear ance and the FBI cover-up, fright ened gangsters have been coming forw ard to share their terrifying tales. A bag lady, who was working as a prostitute at the time, says she was with Jimmy the night it happened. Brandy says she and J immy were just arriving at the hotel when two men in pin-striped suits, large-brimmed hats, and yellow ties and handkerchiefs surprised them. The men took Jimmy out of the car, pointeda gun at the prostitute and said, “Ya ain’t seen nuttin, dija?” brandy says she cowered down in the car and a few seconds later, heard a loud “pop” and saw a bright flash. About an hour later when she got out of the car, all that was left of Jimmy, she says, was a greasy spot on the floor. Gummy bears In the early 1980s, there was a monstrous conspiracy to sell rubber like green and red candy in a variety of forms, especially gummy bears. It was really a test for a new low-level radioactive waste disposal method. By exposing the general popula tion to low doses of radioactivity, the conspirators hoped to breed people immune to higher levels of radiation. They tested it on gummy bears be cause it was easy to fix the radioac tive material in the gummy-bcar sub strate. They got the idea from the experi ments with highly radioactive mate rials that get melted and fused with glass and then buried in sail mines. “Space Balls” Several years ago, the “Just say no” program funded the movie “Space - Balls,” fthich opened with a shot panning the length of a spaceship. s The scene seemed to last forever. The c serpentine ship kept fastidiously float ing by the silver screen for many a minute while triumphant space music thundered in the theater. It was a secret test to determine the true extent of drug use in America. The movie was designed to be sense y less, unless viewers were using hallu cinogenic drugs. If it was a block Elvis is an Elm impersonator in Las Vegas, His shim is prolix good, Not too %ood. though. buster, then there was a BIG problem. UFOs UFOs exist. According to the Weekly World News, space shuttle astronauts heroically rescued an alien starship in distress and brought back its pilot to Earth to meet with Presi dent Bush. i ncy printca a pnoiograpn snow ing the alien with Bush. The alien looks like a skinny man with a funny head in metallic full-body tights and fingers squished into three-fingered mitts. They also showed a picture taken of the alien walking down the steps out of the space shuttle with the astro nauts, and a crudely retouched photo with the alien erased that was re leased by NASA to throw us off the trail. Seeing is believing. Elvis & JFK President Kennedy’s assassination was a conspiracy, too, but not like most people think. You see, there’s this secret club of people who get rich and famous, and then long for quiet time. They can’t get peace anywhere these days, what with news helicopters over famous people’s weddings and all. So they band together and help each other fake their own deaths. Then they live the rest of their lives under an assumed identity. This month the News even published a photograph of JFK at his own grave site. JFK, Jim Morrison and Elvis Presley arc clearly members. Roy Orbison actually lives in Lincoln — I’ve seen him several times and so have my friends. Elvis is an Elvis impersona tor in Las Vegas. His show is pretty good. Not too good, though. People might catch on. Gene Rodenberry joined Iasi week. He goi tired of fans asking him ques tions such as: “How come a phaser can melt through hundreds of feet of rock on a planet and make entire buildings vaporize, but doesn't blast a hole out the side of the ship when somebody misses Kirk and hits the wall?” Andy Kaufman — Latka Gravas from “Taxi” — joined too. Kaufman once said that the best joke in the world would be to fake one’s own death. Obviously this was a ploy to make us think that he wanted us to think he was faking his own death so he could laugh at us, so we would really think he was dead because we didn’t want to be fooled. Clever. He’s a bit disgruntled though, because thousands of women don't flock to his grave site in Paris every year. Partly because he isn’t buried there, of course. Even more humiliating is that, despite repealed attempts at hint dropping, the News has expressed no interest in the possibility that he might still be alive. Geraldo Rivera wants in. But tne members arc leery about letting him join — his nose is too conspicuous. Drugs Drug gangs are a conspiracy of socio-economically disfranchised urban minorities to militarize our country’s inner cities. They want our government to become obsessed with law and order, so that the rest of you suburban scum have to live without protection from a police state. Meanwhile, they live happy, armed lives in the frontiers of the urban centers. They also want to keep yuppies from making expensive studio apart ments out of all the cool old brick buildings. By the way. Black English Ver nacular is a conspiracy of whites to keep the socio-economically disfran chised urban minorities from learn ing to read and write. They want to keep them from getting educations and keep them out of the world econ omy. Tri-Lateral Commission Blacks say the media is a white dominated industry. Whiles say it’s really controlled by the Jews. Jewish people don’t worry about such things as who controls the me dia. They know that the aliens control everything. That’s why they must have formed the Tri-Lateral Commission. Longsine is a senior international affair'* and economics major and a Dally Nebraskan columnist.
